I know what is good.

Breaking Down the Brownie Filled Donut

Donuts are terrible for you, but I love them so much. I love donuts that are impossibly light and fluffy with a thin sweet glaze that cracks and shatters as you bite down upon it. I love crusty cake donuts that are dense, rich and have just a touch of warming sweet spice. I love donuts dusted with powdered sugar that leave their tell-tale trail of joy on your clothes, fingers and face.

I love donuts that are filled with jelly and custard. Donuts that are frosted with chocolate or maple. I love donuts simple and old fashioned. I love modern interpretations of donuts that can be fanciful and topped with bacon or even flowers. And of course I love the cider donuts that we have up here in apple country.

The Dunkin’ marketing machine is now clearly in overdrive, because I’m seeing lots of people who I know, admire and respect gushing about the new creation that the wizards at this large soul-sucking national chain have created.

Do you know how many ingredients it takes to make a donut? Eight. Not including the brownie batter filling or any toppings, do you have any idea how many ingredients Dunkin’ requires just for the donut? Take a guess. Write it down. Then click through.

The answer is thirty four. What was your guess?

Although you might have a difficult time untangling that data from this massive list of ingredients that combines the donut, the filling, the frosting, and the sprinkles. I especially find it upsetting that the donut has something called “Yeast Donut Concentrate” which has 21 ingredients but Soy Flour tops the list. It’s also cute to try and combine five different food gums into one ingredient called “Gum Blend”. Doesn’t that sound delicious.

Well, at least this helps me understand why their donuts aren’t very good. Soy flour? And that’s artificial flavor in the dough! They can’t make their dough taste like dough? Or is it just to cover up the flavor of the other junk? Wow. I wouldn’t eat these if they were free. And I certainly wouldn’t pay money for the privilege of eating their science.

You know what this is? Sweetened shortening with cocoa. That’s not how my mamma made brownies. The only reason this might taste like brownies is because of the artificial flavor. At least with two different preservatives in the stuff, you know that it can sit around in the back of Dunkin’ for a good long time. That’s appetizing, right?

You really need four different kinds of sugar to make icing? Now I think they are just showing off. And don’t forget the partially hydrogenated oils (both from heavily planted GMO crops). That means even if they can report zero grams of trans-fat there is still nasty trans fats in these donuts. Just too little to register in one serving. If you eat two or more donuts that figure increases.

For a second I thought they might have left the soy out of the sprinkles. But no, Dunkin was able to get soy in every component of this donut. I suppose by now you expected corn to be in everything. Oddly, there is no obvious source of corn in the donut itself. However, the dextrose has a good chance of being derived from this ubiquitous building block of the modern American diet.

Look. It’s a free country. You want to eat these things, please, be my guest. However, I just ask that you eat these being fully aware of what you are putting into your body.

Not because it’s unhealthy. All donuts are unhealthy on their face.

No, I’d urge you to avoid these round fried creations of food scientists and chemists because they only bear a passing resemblance at best to a real donut. And the problem is that if we keep eating these things, and trying to convince ourselves that Dunkin’s shelves are filled with actual donuts, we might eventually start believing it.

Please think about this the next time someone sets out a box of these horrors. It’s perfectly fine to politely say, “no thank you.” You can even claim to be on a diet. But given how bad any donut is for you, when you choose to indulge, you should see to it that the donut you eat is magnificent.

Gushing?!? You thought I was gushing? I thought the thing was disgusting. I was attempting to thoroughly lampoon the thing. If the phrase “Taking a bite is to look into the void” came off as gushing, I apologize.

I look at things like that donut as fascinating because they are so strange, I intended no endorsement. Perhaps I needed to be a bit more clear…

I don’t think you need to be more clear Mr Dave. Your feelings seemed obvious enough to me- even if a little tongue in cheek.

Hey Fussypants, did you read his post? Are you really so eager to be a negative Fussypants or to do have some sort of ADHD reading disorder that doesn’t allow you pick up on others feelings? I have to agree with you however on the Dunkin ingredients- they don’t look so good for you (or anything outside of a chemistry lab). I used to refer to discarded styrofoam Dunkin cups as “New England Tumble weed”. I didn’t realize it would spread like a weed.

Ew. If this is what’s in the doughnut, I don’t want to know what is in the “Red Velvet Latte” they recently came out with. Every time I hear the commercial part of me wonders if the Red Dye #40 would kill me.

Albeit the fact someone will bring a box-o-Dunkin dognuts into work once or twice a week, I thoroughly avoid them. Eating one is akin to licking out the bottom of my childhood chemistry set – they leave a completely astringent aftertaste in my mouth which takes hours to dissipate. Utterly vile on every level.

You want a donut, try the absolutely divine glazed donuts from The Cookie Factory in Troy. If you can’t taste the difference, you shouldn’t be reading this blog.

Admittedly, for most people, they’re the only “good” doughnut they’ve had. (“Good” in this case means “tastier than the crappy ones in a box at the grocery store.”) Until there are more makers of actually-good doughnuts around here, in places closer to where we live, that’s not likely to change.

I come from a land that is still filled with mom and shop doughnut shops. The Doughnut Stop, Donuts & More, Donut Delite…the Dunkin Donuts are few and far between in my Midwestern hometown. Out there the donuts taste like the ones my mom made (only better because they can make a mean Long John, which is a little advanced for a home kitchen). There were no gimmicks and likely no ‘gum blend’. They were real donuts that tasted like donuts. Shocking! I am appalled at the success of Dunkin out here considering they don’t even come close to tasting like real donuts. I’m not huge on sugar anyway so when I do consume it, I want it to be worthwhile. One of these weekends I will make the drive to try a King’s donut.

If you want a great donut, head over to the Schuyler Bakery in Watervliet. Their jelly donuts and “sinkers” are great. May as well pick up some cinnamon raisin bread and those rectangular buns with the white frosting while you are there too. You will never be tempted to go to Dunkin again.

I’m so sorry to hear that. You should forward this story to everyone you know. Paste it on your Facebook wall. Tweet about it. Pin it. Text it. Print it out and tape it up in the break room at work. And let’s hope that what happened to you doesn’t have to happen to anyone else. ;^)